ICT Essentials for Teachers (Module 2)

Although ICT plays a crucial role in education, many schools in Nigeria are yet to adopt it for teaching, learning, and research. Efforts to incorporate ICT into the school system have not yielded the desired result due to the following challenges:

(i) Policy:

Inadequate policy implementation.

(ii) Institutional and Administrative Capacity

Although capacity-building of teachers in ICT is being done, a good percentage of teachers are still not proficient in ICT. There is also, an insufficient pool of ICT professionals in the sector. These weaknesses are compounded by inadequate ICT infrastructure for teaching, learning, research and educational administration in some institutions.

(iii) Regulation

IT Education, especially in the nonformal education sub-sector is still largely non-standardised, uncoordinated and unsupervised. This has resulted in the proliferation of computer training outfits that offer all sorts of certificates and programmes based on curricula that are undefined.  

(iv) Curriculum

There is generally a lack of regular review and updating of existing IT curricula, especially at the tertiary level, to meet changing societal needs. There is also low capacity of curriculum developers and implementers. The challenge of outdated curriculum is even more pronounced because of the dynamic nature of IT.  

(v) Efficiency and effectiveness in the use of IT

Teacher educators and teachers are concerned more with efficiency rather than effectiveness when they adopt ICT in education.  Thus, ICT is used to make their jobs easier instead of making learning more effective. As a result, the teaching/learning process has not embraced the current educational paradigm which emphasizes student-centred instruction with the teacher as the facilitator rather than teacher as the source of knowledge.

(vi) Equity Issues

There is a great dichotomy between urban and rural schools and between public and private schools with regards to the availability of ICT personnel and resources. Urban schools and private schools tend to have more ICT personnel and resources as well as power supply.  

(vii) Research

There is low research on ICT in education.  Thus, policy-makers are not able to assess the impact of ICT on the education system.

(viii) Funding

Although funds are being provided for ICT in education, they are largely inadequate to provide the drive necessary to position the sector for the attainment of the national goals. The foregoing reveals that the state of ICT in education in Nigeria falls below global standards. This reinforces the need for focused intervention in ICT in education.

From the foregoing, particularly disturbing is the fact that lack of infrastructure and administrative capacity has made many Nigerian graduates leave institutions of higher learning without having access to the computer, leaving them without the requisite skills to integrate into the ICT-driven world.

This has led to the debate on Digital Divide, watch the videos below to enhance your study:

Make4Prosperity. (2018). Digital Divide (video)Page
Johnson, D. (2015). Helping to close the digital divideURL

From the videos, we can restate under-funding, population explosion, and poor implementation of policies as some of the challenges militating against the efforts to massively deploy ICT in Education.

The solution to the Challenges of Implementing ICT in Education

A modern and vibrant education system entails wide-ranging activities that would ensure functional and qualitative education of the highest possible standards in educational institutions. As such, the following solutions are proffered:

• ICT in Education is capital intensive. The traditional budgetary by the government should be improved upon and other stakeholders encouraged to finance ICT in education. The focus is to ensure increased funding for ICT in education, exploit existing funding channels, intensify the use of creative financing models, and harness partnerships with development partners.
• Effective curriculum revision that includes compulsory integration of ICT in the education curriculum at all levels will help to bridge the gap.
• Qualified and experienced IT teachers should be employed and deployed to schools to enhance the digital literacy of the students. Stakeholders should also see to the establishment of  ICT laboratories in schools.
• The government should subsidise access to ICT-related equipment and software. It should also provide equitable access to ICT-enabled education in all parts of the country.